Meet the world’s newest super carrier, made entirely in China
China’s new unnamed home-built aircraft carrier leaves Dalian in northeast China’s Liaoning Province for sea trials Sunday, May 13, 2018. (Li Gang/Xinhua via AP)
China’s first aircraft carrier built entirely in its own shipyard, the giant unnamed Type 001A modified Kuznetsov-class flattop, set out from Dalian (old Tsarist Port Arthur from the Russo-Japanese War for those military history buffs) on builder’s sea trials Sunday morning.
“Our country’s second aircraft carrier set sail from its dock in the Dalian shipyard for relevant waters to conduct a sea trial mission, mainly to inspect and verify the reliability and stability of mechanical systems and other equipment,” Reuters quoted the official Xinhua news agency as saying.
Unlike Type 001 carrier Liaoning, which was originally laid down in 1985 for the Soviet Navy as the Kuznetsov-class aircraft cruiser Riga and only completed in 2012 after an epic 27-year saga, the new Type 001A was built wholly in China and could be a sign of things to come.
Laid down in Nov. 2013, she is expected to be operational sometime next year, a production cycle that took just six years and rivals that of the current Ford-class (although it should be pointed out that class-leader, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), had her first steel cut in 2005, was officially laid down in 2009, commissoned last year, and is not expected to deploy until 2020)